The distant music had subsided to a low, plaintive strain; the apartment into which, in their turn, the two had seemed to float upon those floods of melody was bathed in a subdued and softened light; the odour of perfumes loaded the atmosphere; and the sounds of far-off revelry did but add to the languor and seclusion of the scene. Mary’s cheek was a shade paler and her step scarce so buoyant as usual. She seemed fatigued, and whilst awaiting the louder peal of music that should summon them back to the dance, the Queen seated herself on a low chair near the doorway, and fixed her eyes upon the floor with a dreamy, listless gaze. Chastelâr remained standing, bent over her chair as if fascinated, spell-bound. The music sank lower and lower, and they were alone!
At last the Queen raised her eyes to his, and what she saw there brought the blood reddening to her brow. It broke the charm, however, and the poet found his voice to speak, though his lips trembled so that he could scarcely form his words. He knelt before her as he would have knelt to a saint.
‘Ah! madam,’ he exclaimed in broken accents, ‘accept my homage, my thanks, my everlasting gratitude. This is the day in Chastelâr’s life that he had better lay him down and die in his great happiness, for the sun can never shine on such another for him again.’
She smiled on him, half-kindly and half-pitiful.
‘Why should you thus thank me, Chastelâr?’ she said. ‘What have I granted to my Troubadour that is not richly merited by one so loyal, so devoted, and so true?’
She spoke lightly and playfully, yet was there a tone of repressed feeling in her voice. No woman alive could have looked unmoved on the depth of intense devotion that glowed in Chastelâr’s face.
‘Ay, madam,’ he replied, ‘you have ever been kind and condescending and gracious to your slave. You know not what your notice is to him: how he watches every turn of your face, and hangs on every word of your lips. What the blessed sunlight is to creation—its hope, its love, its pride, its whole existence—such is your presence, O Mary! O my Queen! to me.’
‘Nay,’ she replied, half-rising from her seat, and looking round as though not caring that their dialogue should be overheard; ‘nay, Chastelâr, how you are trenching on your own prerogative, and wasting on my solitary ear the materials for a sonnet which should delight the whole Court. I cannot listen to such compliments from my Troubadour, save in verse.’
‘You will listen to them thus,’ he exclaimed, eagerly. ‘You will allow me to lay at your feet a volume I have long wished, but not dared, to pray you to accept. May I experience this great happiness? Is it a promise?’
She bowed her fair head in acquiescence, and her colour went and came. Queen though she were, Mary Stuart was also a woman to the heart’s core; and it was not in woman’s nature but to experience a tinge of gratification and triumph in an authority so despotic, a dominion so complete as this.